TheLittleSongbird I was not expecting much from Deathlands, but got better than anticipated even if the end result was still very flawed. It does get some plaudits for the acting being better than average, Vincent Spano has never been a big favourite but still does a decent job in the lead, the female lead is also more than a pretty face at least, while Cliff Saunders does what he can with some of the weakest material. As well as some slick editing and authentic scenery. On the other hand the colour filtering is very distracting, so much so at first I wasn't sure whether it was the film or whether my television had broken. The dialogue is really tepid, I am sure they are in the books too(I haven't read them though) but this could have been an opportunity to improve on that and they missed it. The music is generic with nothing memorable sticking out, and the action is unexciting with the last one in particular having none of the relentless adrenaline-rushing thrills you'd expect. What's just as bad is that I just wasn't convinced by the story or any of the characters. The story despite a reasonably intriguing idea was dull and seemed structurally thin, with no sense of suspense or genuine surprise, while the characters are clichéd and just never seem to come to life, you don't learn much about them and in the end you don't care about them or their motivations. Overall, Deathlands is not a terrible movie, I've seen much worse, but it could have been far better as well. 4/10 Bethany Cox

r_barton I've read most of the Deathlands books and this movie doesn't do any of them justice. The characters are stupid and the plot is so weak that it could have been written by a child ( no offense to the kiddies). I had hoped for some time that there would be a movie based on the books, now I'm not so sure that it should have been attempted. Perhaps some producer and director with some talent and a decent cash flow will do it some day and portray the stories in the manner they were meant to be told. This could be the next great action movie if done the way it should. It would help if the story started from the beginning, so that the viewers who have never read the books would get the idea of who these people are and what they are trying to do.

madcat_1 I'm a big fan of the deathland books. I thought the movie was good with the budget guidelines they had to work within. I'm sure scifi didn't wanna put millions in a untested project. I would like to see a mini-series of the first book, Deathlands-Pilmagrige to Hell. Then I would like to see a series of original one hour episodes launch covering new and unread material based on the deathlands theme. These books contain a all to real clumps into a all to possible future based on simple mistakes made by a minority to plunge humanity into darkness and chaos. I recommend anyone with a taste for post apocalyptic scenario's to try out this series and maybe in the future one of the major networks will take an interest in a quality budgeted for of this series.

yojimbo999 Well, I've never read the book or anything, but it's probably a given that it's better than this clunker of a movie adaptation. The film suffers badly from a low budget and just silly villains. Let me get this straight: 100 years after a nuclear war, and these uneducated, primitive survivalists will let two nutcases "rule" them like a king and queen, when any one of them could shoot the "rulers" in the head if they so chooses to? Yeah, right.Some groovy editing work can't save it. This is just a poor movie, and should never have been made. Really, really bad.